Update: The cracker is gone. The post is worth reading because PZ explains how the puffery around the supposed sacredness of communion wafers is linked to finding excuses to torture and kill Jews. Something to consider if you have an urge to treat treacly Catholic nonsense, from opposition to birth control to sanctifying women who die in childbirth to acting like communion wafers and embryos are more important than people, like it’s harmless goofery. It’s interesting to see the emails he got, which resemble ones I’ve gotten in the past from people whose minds have been completely ruined by religion. Except they’re even more crazy. I can say that most half-crazed emails I get make me laugh, but the pitiful ones from true believers just depress me. They’re just broken people, and I blame the church.
Sorry it took me so long to write a proper review of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I half expected the book to be a hateful screed against religious people, since it was treated that way by critics, but as usual when it comes to these things, religion is being sheltered from criticism by conflating criticism of it, or even mockery, as if it’s as bad or worse than hurting actual human beings. (Recent example: Caterwauling over the desecration of a cracker of a length and volume that the death of human beings rarely gets. People, blasphemy is a victimless crime.) The book actually takes the view that I do of most religious people, which is that they’re the primary victims of religion, either because of the brainwashing by their own or the violent oppression by those who follow other religions. If anything, Dawkins’ meme theory tends to make him more sanguine about religious people than I feel, as he thinks that religion has somewhat taken a life of its own and infects hosts, which are believers. My cynicism about the motivations of those who use religion to exploit and control people tends to color my views, but he’s absolutely right to look at religion as its own entity that can be examined for how it spreads and survives without necessarily getting into a pissing match over whether or not the people who actively push it are bad, or if some are bad, or whether or not the bad outnumber the good or whatever.